Re: [boost] Preliminary submission: generic linear algebra algorithms library Boost LA

Subject: Re: [boost] Preliminary submission: generic linear algebra algorithms library Boost LA
From: Thomas Klimpel (Thomas.Klimpel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-10-20 05:41:39

Hello Emil,

> Boost LA provides a set of generic linear algebra algorithms,
> primarily for working with vectors and matrices of static size.

I don't quite get what you mean by "generic linear algebra algorithms". Some curriculum for Mathematics contain a two semester course on "Linear Algebra", but there is very little overlap between what is thought in such a course and your proposed library.

The final piece to fully confuse me are the files "matrix_determinant.hpp" and "matrix_inverse.hpp". Are they meant as examples of how the library can be used? Then they should be part of the examples and not part of the library. Or do they also represent some "generic linear algebra algorithm"? But in this case, I wonder why you used an algorithm of complexity O(n!) for computing the determinant, when it's easy to implement an algorithm of complexity O(n^3) for computing the determinant. (The complexity of O(n^2*!(n-1)) for computing the inverse is also not better.) My conclusion from this is that you don't really consider "matrix_determinant.hpp" and "matrix_inverse.hpp" to be part of the library, because I doubt that you would propose a totally inefficient library for review.

Regards,
Thomas